Odds and Ends

Yesterday I removed the panels from the plane that make the interior surfaces next to the front seats' occupants' legs. They originally were part vinyl and part carpet with only two very small pockets in the vinyl portion. Over time, however, the glue had broken down and the carpet had formed really huge makeshift pockets. Not only are they ugly, it's very difficult to find something once put into that abyss and the carpet flaps get in the way of sliding the seats around.

So my project for last night was to make some pockets and reattach the carpet to the panels. I finished up at about 1 am and was fairly happy with the results. Tomorrow morning I'll go reinstall them before John's 9:00 am training flight.

I finally got into bed with an aching back and was delighted to lay down and unwind. On the verge of sleep, that damn annoying voice in my head volunteered "What are your options if the engine fails on takeoff from 13?" Drat. The voice knows I can't leave a question like that alone. So I mentally went through as much as I could, and the part that's really hard is landing site. With little altitude you have two options: aim for the marsh or the winding bit of tributary going through the marsh. I don't know which is better; Husband thinks the water because at least that way there's not marsh grass bogging down the landing gear and it might be a little smoother. With a little more altitude, there's the vineyard that has some open fields (next to the vined fields) off to the right at about 90 degrees, and there's the Colonial Parkway about 30 degrees to the right a little farther out, a nice 3-lane road with no medians, few signs but generally enough traffic to be unappealing. Beyond that, there's the river. Off to the left is a big well-treed neighborhood.

During preflight for Friday's solo flight, the AWOS said something I had never heard before: "Density altitude 1500." (Not that I haven't heard of density altitude, but I had never heard it included in the weather report.) Field elevation is 49'. I had no idea whether that changed anything, and since I had never heard that before I assumed it was significant. With the engine still running, I pulled out my cell phone, turned it on and called Husband. He succinctly said that at 1500 it was nothing to worry about and to go on with my flight; we'd talk about it later. So I did, and the lesson effectively was that the density altitude is the altitude the engine will "think" it's at. Performance will be akin to what it would you'd expect there. The time to be concerned about it is when it's much higher than field elevation (I think Husband said 3000' counts as much higher), because it will cause a longer takeoff roll and faster landing groundspeed (for the same airspeed).

Tomorrow I have a lesson at 1 pm. It feels like forever since the last time I went up with Chuck (21 days tomorrow, in fact). We're covering short- and soft-field takeoffs and landings. What I know of them now are:

1. for short-field takeoffs, you climb out at Vx instead of Vy after going to full power with the brakes still applied (to get a running start instead of a rolling start); good for obstacle avoidance
2. for short-field landings, you have a steeper descent (obstacle avoidance) and try to land really slowly (it's a short field, after all, right?)
3. for soft-field takeoffs, I don't know anything yet, but you probably want to get off that soft field sooner rather than later so maybe it's like a short-field takeoff
4. for soft-field landings, you want to be slow and hold the nosewheel off as long as possible to minimize opportunity for damaging the nosegear; a soft field example is an emergency landing in a crop field where there might be dirt clumps and furrows and whatnot, and if you want any hope of flying the plane out later, you want to preserve the equipment.

Those seem to have practical value with regards to emergency procedures and the short-field stuff could apply to regular landing strips, too. In fact, JGG requests short-field takeoffs as part of the noise-abatement procedures. I guess it's time for me to learn them!